The Blackhawks played host to the Rogers Mountaineers and Siloam Springs in the annual pre-season benefit scrimmage last week.
The rainy weather moved out of the area, making for a great evening for football at Blackhawk Stadium. The 'Hawks played Siloam Springs for the second year in a row for the benefit game, adding Rogers High School into the mix for 2019. Rogers is the first 7A football school with which Pea Ridge has ever competed.
The size of the respective schools was widely varied. Rogers has 2,000 students in their high school, Siloam Springs with nearly 1,100, while the Blackhawks latest high school count was 528. Though the smaller school, the 'Hawks acquitted themselves quite well, making a number of good plays offensively as well as defensively.
"We competed well and had great effort from the players," head coach Stephen Neal remarked. "We had no injuries and we got in a lot of good playing time. We will look at the film and see where we are. I do think we are going to be very good this year."
The three times spent an hour rotating teams in and out of offense and defense with lots of players getting some chances to compete. Prior to this event, no team had ever competed at Blackhawk Stadium with more than 70 uniformed players. All three teams exceeded that number.
The evening came to a climax with all three teams playing each other in one quarter of regulation play. After Rogers and Siloam Springs started things off, Pea Ridge came on to play the Panthers in the second 12-minute competition.
The defense played very well, holding Siloam to minus 10 yards until the last three minutes of the quarter. Though not denting the scoreboard, the 'Hawks had outyarded their guests 57 to -10 until the Panthers broke a receiver loose to scamper 56 yards for a touchdown with 2:28 left in the period.
Pea Ridge got good yardage on rushes by Samuel Beard, Tate Busey and Daniel Deleon with quarterback Tate competing throws to Brandon Ralph, Trevor Blair and Hunter Rains. Pea Ridge ended the brief contest besting the Panthers in total yardage 85 to 58. The 'Hawks picked up six penalty flags that cost them 65 yards to slow their offense.
The 'Hawks' two biggest offensive plays were deep passes from Tate to Blair that were caught inside the 10-yard line. Each time, however, they were ruled out of bounds in spite of the fact that the 'Hawk receiver was pushed out by the defender. The biggest defensive play may have been defensive lineman Anthony Bleything's 12-yard quarterback sack of the Panther signal caller that forced a punt.
The 'Hawks played much a more disciplined quarter against the Mounties, committing zero penalties. Deleon was the primary ball carrier, picking up positive yardage on each carry. Busey was effective running the ball on two keepers. Rogers out gained the 'Hawks 102-50 in the brief contest, with 61 of the visitors yards coming on a single passing play with 8:35 showing.
The benefit game was a good warm up leading to the season opener against powerhouse 5A school Harrison this week in Pea Ridge. Ranked as the No. 2 team in the state in that class, Harrison has most of last year's starters back from a team that went 12-1, losing only to perennial power Pulaski Academy in the state semi-finals. The Goblins led that game until a series of turnovers derailed their drive to Little Rock.
The benefit of the benefit game was to raise funds for the Arkansas Activities Association catastrophe insurance fund. The AAA buys this insurance to cover every member school in the state. All proceeds from the gate money from all the benefit games goes into this fund to provide insurance coverage in the event of a major catastrophe.
Sports on 08/28/2019